


The Possibility of Becoming

by KLStarre



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (mostly), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, POV Third Person, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:25:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre
Summary: The truth is they are all three in love, with each other and with everything else.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Slightlyterrified](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slightlyterrified/gifts).



            The first words that Barry Allen learns to read are _Bet you can’t catch me!_

            They are engraved on his skin in a delicate black tattoo, running up his upper arm and fading away as they reach his collarbone. The day after he learns his letters and the sounds they make, he stands in front of a mirror, sounding them out one by one until he has the phrase memorized. He was a fast learner, even then.

            When the West family moves in down the street and the little girl introduces herself by tagging him and running away, tossing a challenge over her shoulder as her hair bounces in the wind, he thinks it’s odd that she would say the exact words that he knows so well. But he is young, and he does not know what a soulmate is, and by the time he learns it is many years later, and the interaction has faded from his mind. So he yells a, “Yes, I can!” and sprints after her, tripping over untied shoelaces in his excitement.

            She is far too fast for him, and he is panting and out of breath long before she slows. But they laugh together, rolling in the freshy fallen leaves, and from that moment on they love each other.

            (That night, Iris asks her father what it means, that the boy down the street knew what the calligraphy on her shoulderblade said. Joe sighs, and shakes his head. He’s never believed in soulmates, and she is too young for heartbreak.)

∞

            Two years later, Barry goes to live with the Wests. He is still young, too young to understand what is happening, but he misses his mother. When he cries himself to sleep, Iris comforts him, and she asks him what having a mom is like, he tells her. They are best friends and then some, and it’s only when Barry starts high school and one of his friends asks him if he likes any of the girls that he realizes that he is in love with her. He knows about the words by then, of course, and he assumes that because Iris never said anything to him about hers that they are not meant to be. So he says nothing, loving her from afar throughout high school and into adulthood and then.

            And _then._

            He awakens to two voices, above him and outside him, his everything blurry.

            “What are you _doing?”_ That’s a girl’s voice, he thinks, and before he has time to process, his heart leaps, thinking of Iris.

            But then it is followed by a “He likes this song” from a boy, he thinks, an unfamiliar boy, and a “How could you possibly know that?” coming from the same girl and he realizes that, no, it’s not Iris.

            And he doesn’t know where he is.

            Or who these people are.

            Or what happened.

            They keep talking but he doesn’t hear the words, tentatively wiggling a finger and a toe and then, not even stopping to think, sitting up, gasping. They scream, these two strange people that Barry has never met before, and then they introduce themselves and everything is a blur of tests and information and he got struck by _lightning_ and his cells are regenerating and it’s been nine months and Iris Iris Iris and it’s not until that night, when he is stripping down to shower, that he notices the new writing, right down the outside of his left thigh.

            These words are grey, not as certain as the ones on his arm (funnily enough, he and Iris still haven’t worked out that they are hers), and they read _He likes this song_ in a long, looping script.

            Well.

            _Shit._

            (Meanwhile, Cisco Ramon traces the _Where am I?_ that runs down the back of his neck and that he hides with long, cultivated hair, and smiles. He had known it was Barry, known it from the first moment he set eyes on him, and it is gratifying being right.)

            (He doesn’t notice the tiny, pale _Oh, you must be Cisco_ that now coils behind his right ear.)

∞

            Barry learns that Iris is seeing Eddie and his heart breaks a little bit every time he sees them together. He doesn’t know that she wonders every day why her words do not claim Eddie as her soulmate, even though a new set has just appeared on the inside of her wrist. He just knows that he is soulmates with Cisco, Cisco and someone else (he had thought maybe it was Iris; after all, he has no clear memory of the beginning of their friendship. But if her words matched him, why would she bother with Eddie?).

            He is in love with Iris West. But he is also, as time goes on, a little bit in love with Cisco Ramon. They understand each other, on a level that is different from anyone else, and when they lock eyes, Barry feels something in his chest and in his smile that makes him want to hold hands with this incredible boy who saved him from the brink of death.

            So, when Cisco gets tired of waiting and asks, almost casually, if Barry wants to grab a drink together, Barry says yes. After all, according to the world, they are destined to love each other – and who is he to argue with destiny?

            They go for the drink, to a little bar-but-not-a-bar that Cisco says he went to all the time during college, and they talk and laugh and eat and dance around the subject of what it is, exactly, that they are doing. It doesn’t feel like a date, not really, not until they are walking home and the moon is out and Barry walks in between Cisco and the limited traffic.

            They are halfway to Cisco’s apartment, both of them carefully avoiding thinking about what will come after, when Cisco says, very carefully, “You know, I’ve got the first thing you’ve ever said to me, right here.” And he inclines his head and sure enough, there it is, a question in Barry’s writing.

            This is a moment of trust and of freefall, more intimate than any physicality. Because soulmates are not always mutual, and they are both acutely aware of this fact. So when Barry smiles, says “Yours are covered by my pants, but they’re there,” and laughs a little bit, self-conscious and relieved, tension that they hadn’t even known was there bleeds out of them both. Their hands touch, cautiously, and then intertwine, and they walk the rest of the way to Cisco’s apartment not yet a couple, but with the beautiful possibility of becoming.

            They don’t tell the others about it, at first, but after three more dates-that-are-definitely-dates and kissing and hand-holding and good morning texts, they decide to bring it up. Barry mentions it, offhand, one day when they are running tests and not too busy saving the world, and Harrison Wells sighs and tells them not to let it distract from their work. Caitlin is happy for them, but her eyes are sad. And Iris. Iris smiles and laughs and wishes them a future together and even though Barry thinks he loves Cisco, he really does, his heart breaks that she is happy.

            That night, they lie together on Cisco’s bed and Barry traces patterns on Cisco’s back. He has been reserved, since they told Wells, held back as if he is trying to hold himself together. Cisco has never had much of a father, not really, and to have his happiness dismissed by the man he had chosen to fill that role had hurt him. Barry has his own hurt, now, the image of Iris with Eddie dancing behind closed eyes, but he does his best to comfort Cisco, and they hold each other long into the night.

            The next night, they press each other closer than either of them has been with anyone else, skin against skin and mouths melting together. It is only after, when Barry reaches out to tuck a strand of Cisco’s hair behind his ear, that he notices the ink that dots his skin there. “What’s this?” he asks, not upset but confused, and Cisco shakes his head.

            “What’s what?”

            “You have another set of words. It says…It says _Oh, you must be Cisco_.”

            “Well,” Cisco says, trying to make light of it and not quite succeeding, “It’s not wrong.”

            “Do you know who it could be?” Barry asks, telling himself that he has no right to be jealous, that he has an eminently visible second set of his own, that with the way he still thinks of Iris it’s only right that Cisco would have someone else.

            “I don’t know,” Cisco says, and Barry knows he is telling the truth.

So when finally, finally, Cisco and Iris get to meet, and the first thing Iris says is “Oh, you must be Cisco!” and Cisco replies automatically with an “I’ve heard so much about you,” they are too busy locking eyes with each other to notice Iris covering her wrist with her hand.

They are too shocked to see the sadness in Eddie’s eyes as he wraps his arm around her, pulling her close in defiance of what the universe says must happen.

(Cisco and Barry don’t talk about it. Except for one night, months later, after they’ve said _I love you_ for the first time, when Barry admits to being in love with her, too, still. Cisco nods and laughs and says _I know_ and his hand goes to the place behind his ear that he tries not to think about. Because the truth is they are all three in love, with each other and with everything else, even if Iris doesn’t yet know).

∞

Eddie dies. Iris mourns. Life goes on, but differently.

Barry and Cisco discuss telling Iris about what is meant to be, but decide to wait, to let her mourn. They do not specify for how long.

They do agree that if something happens with her, with either of them, it is okay. How can it be cheating, to follow the declarations of fate?

Barry and Cisco have been together for one year. It feels like longer. Love is strange that way. For their anniversary, they go to the bar-but-not-a-bar where they had their first date, and they watch the Princess Bride together, sharing a blanket and a bowl of popcorn. When Buttercup and Westley say “As you wish,” they kiss, tasting of each other and of butter and salt and then they watch Star Wars and Barry says “I love you,” and Cisco, grinning, responds with “I know.”

They are happy together, happy enough to forget everything else that has ever happened to them, and they fall asleep together with the world spinning around them.

∞

Barry kisses Iris, and then he ruins everything. When he comes back, back from Flashpoint, his words from Cisco have faded away to a faint white line against his skin. The Cisco of this timeline is his friend, but nothing else, and that more than anything is what makes him go to Jay, and to Felicity, begging for help.

But they can’t help him. He rebuilt the world for himself, but that’s not how the world works, and now he has to live with it.

And then.

And the Cisco finds out about Dante, and now he’s not even his friend, and yes, he has Iris now, and he adores her and she makes him happier than anything else, but that’s not how this works, it’s not one as a replacement for the other, it’s he’s in love with them both and he ruined it, and now he doesn’t know if it can ever be fixed.

So he dates Iris, and he loves Iris, and he misses Cisco with everything in him and eventually he tells Iris about it and she shows him the lines on her wrist that declare that she and Cisco are just as much each other’s and she and Barry are. They mourn what could have been, together, and the two of them are a little bit less for his absence.

“You’re not a hero, to me,” Cisco says, face to face, in the wake of an alien invasion, and Barry Allen’s heart falls apart. He remembers nights and days spent together, being in love and being each other’s comfort and making each other laugh when nothing else could, and a little piece of him dies. But then: “You’re my friend.”

When Barry gets home, that night, the _He likes this song_ on his leg has been replaced by a _You’re my friend,_ and it is as solid a black as the world has ever seen.

Without thinking, he picks up his phone, and he dials Cisco. He knows he has not been fully forgiven, knows that he has so much to make up for. But he wants Cisco to know the truth, and he wants to be able to begin again.

To maybe, for once, do something right.

**Author's Note:**

> This was for the Flashvibe Secret Santa of 2016! Merry Christmas to slightlyterrified.tumblr.com, I hope you enjoy


End file.
